Apologies for the topic, but it was an area of interest for me. There weren't many Vista topics, so...

After using Vista on a newer machine, I didn't know what all the flak was about. The only issue I had was a missing driver after installation (of RTM), which is understandable since the computer was manufactured in late 2008.

Vista introduced so many nice features. In fact, Windows Vista is the only operating system to have six articles on the English version of Wikipedia dedicated to the new features it introduced!

What was your experience (assuming you had one) with the operating system? What was your initial impression after the first log in? What made you go "Wow!"?

i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic

aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing)

i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too)

all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy

i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic

aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing)

i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too)

all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy

i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing) i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too) all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy

What are you talking about? Windows 7 and Vista share the same Glass theme. The only difference I would say is Windows 7 dropped the shaded Taskbar. Also, the Glass theme in Windows 7 is more refined, compare the Start menu pane in Vista vs 7. Windows 7 Start menu has a certain glass and shine to it.

Personally, I don't have a problem with Windows Vista, still have it installed on a HP workstation where I keep my iTunes Library.

I ran it on my laptop and other desktops until Windows 7 beta came along. I will admit, even on a Core 2 Quad, 2 GBs of ECC RAM and 512 MB Quadro FX video card (state of the art for late 2008), Vista boots slow on it, takes long to compose the desktop. It just was not optimized. If Vista had the optimizations of Windows 7, it would not have the backlash it got.

A lot of the compatibility issues Vista initially experienced were resolved within the first two months of general availability.

I had installed it on the workstation beside me at work a few months ago since the machine has upgrade rights to Vista Business, as slow as it is, its still nice to use in some areas. To be honest though, I use Windows 8 everyday, today I had to back it up because the machines are being refreshed next week. So I was left to use Vista and I have to say, it felt weird. I work a lot with WordPad, the minute I opened it I felt weird, lack of Ribbon and just the garrish 90's feel of it.

I think if Microsoft had also updated some of the built in apps at the time too, it wouldn't be so bad. Overall, I readjusted and used as normal. I plan to keep Vista on the workstation I have at home until the machine dies. I don't really need to have Windows 7 or 8 on it since its doing what it needs to do. The eventual successor though is a iMac or MacBook Pro I will be purchasing later this year.

Sadly, my first impressions of Vista were not favorable to say the least. I had gotten it as a freebie from Microsoft's small business promotion which gave away 30k copies (remember that Neowin?) I also had gotten a free copy for my laptop which came with it as an upgrade. I installed that copy first which was Home Premium and it ran slower than reasonable for me. I tried business and it was still slow so I just stored them away and went back to XP at the time.

I think I was more disappointed with the removal of items from it that were promised which were indeed eye-candy such as transparent folders by default, animations when switching through them etc.. I think it was PDC 2003 or somwhere around that time. Not only that though, was also the delayed release. Remember when it was promised but never came but for a few more years later? I think that threw a lot of people off of it.

When I look back at the eye-candy things and all the goodies that come with it, I tend to agree that anymore while it is quite amazing and fun to look at for the first few times, after that - it is quite old and you want to do anything to disable it. I experience the same thing on my Android anymore, it is all "OOOH!!! Eye-Candy!!!" then after about a day or two of looking at it, I switch the program's animations off. (Launchers mostly).

I didn't really have any issues with Vista, even from day 1. Vista Ultimate Extras was a big flop, but I mainly used Home Premium anyway. The bulk of Vista's "issues" weren't even the fault of the OS itself, it was from hardware developers (most notably nVidia) not releasing proper drivers in time for Vista's launch, and Microsoft's mis-marketing of it. "Vista Capable" should never have existed. The only computers that should've been marketed as being able to run Vista were the ones that were marketed as "Vista Premium", with over a GB of RAM and a decent processor from the time. If nVidia had released Vista drivers on time and Microsoft never used "Vista Capable" as a marketing ploy, Vista would likely be remembered a lot more fondly by the masses.

i had no problem at all. worked on a dell inspiron 9400 and also on my acerferrari 5000. not a big microsoft fan but it was their only OS i bought online. i liked vista aero glass effects and besides that it was as good or bad as xp was.
still convinced most people were just fine with the OS but because it got such a bad press now everyone thinks it was bad.

On my Athlon 64 X2 system that I just built, Vista x64 actually has support for all of my devices out of the box. With XP x64, I had to mindlessly search for drivers (like video and networking) which I could never find. I really like the Aero Glass UI. It's a fresh change from XP's Luna interface.

/me travels back to present day.

I never had any problems with Vista. I used it from November 2006 until January 2010. It was a great OS for day-to-day use. I never had any outstanding problems with it. In fact, I wouldn't have any problems with still using it today, but I've grown to love Windows 7 and now 8.

Vista had some genuine issues when it came out, probably the biggest issue for me was how slow it was to copy files, but there were other issues as well. I brought it on release day and, along with the slow file copying, experienced frequent Explorer crashes and blue screens.

Lousy drivers from hardware vendors (on release, and for a while afterward), a ton of software that was not designed to run under a non-admin account (that people blamed Microsoft for, not the actual developers of the software), the negative response people had to DX10 (exclusive to Vista, but with hardly any advantages), the joke that was Ultimate Extras, and the fact it had only a portion of the "cool stuff" Microsoft had been showing off for years with Longhorn, it gained a bad reputation that it never could get rid of (even after a myriad of patches fixed many of the bugs and performance problems).